Lillian Gish's Patience

A Star’s Patience with a Monitor Error

Jim Patterson 415 516 3493

Patience was often cited by friends and colleagues as a fundamental personal quality of silent screen actress Lillian Gish.

“She has an inexhaustible fund of patience,” said Phyllis Moir, Miss Gish’s secretary during her final years in Hollywood.  

Perhaps Lillian Gish developed patience while making silent films in which a director prepared her for a scene by shooting at her with a gun loaded with real bullets. Later, she placed her neck in a guillotine for a scene in the 1922 film “Orphans of the Storm.”

Miss Gish also needed patience when the Christian Science Monitor’s Arthur Unger interviewed her for a 1975 article. Unger reported on some of Miss Gish’s then current film related projects.

Aside from lecturing on silent film, she hosted a 12-week silent film series for the Public Broadcasting System. Unger’s article appeared in the Monitor July 31, 1975, and was syndicated nationally.

“She is a delicate woman who still projects an often- of- the-storm quality of beauty, tentative vulnerability – and, yet, firm resolve and intelligence,” Unger wrote.

Obviously, he intended to reference Miss Gish’s film “Orphans of the Storm” and something went terribly wrong from his copy to the Monitor’s pages and the pages of newspapers across the country who ran the article.

Unger mailed Miss Gish a clipping of the article with a letter, dated August 4, 1975. He wrote to return two photographs he used for the article. He also offered an apology.

“Please excuse the various typographical errors over which I have no control (often-of-the –storm, would you believe?),” he wrote.

After suggesting a more complete story about Miss Gish, Unger wrote, “Thanks for your time….and your patience.”

I corresponded with Miss Gish for nearly 30 years and I, too, can attest to her great patience. Our correspondence began when I was in high school and saw her in a TV production of “Arsenic and Old Lace” with her longtime friend actress Helen Hayes.

Miss Gish’s enthusiasm for her work appealed to me and I became a lifelong student of her films and writings.

I never sought acting advice from her as I was not interested in such a career. What I got from her was an appreciation for her enthusiasm for her work and, of course, her patience.

Looking back at her mail and photographs always comforts and relaxes me. It is a gift she had and I am forever grateful she shared it with me.

Since Miss Gish’s film career began in 1912 it is an understatement to say film technology has advanced. Film is simply in a different world today.

Likewise journalism. The typographical errors Unger had “no control” over are a thing of the past. Technology, spell checkers and digital corrections, has rendered errors obsolete.

Still, actors, journalists and readers need patience in doing their work and coping with modern life. Miss Gish, who never had a serious illness, lived to be 99. Perhaps, based on her example, patience leads to a healthy and long life. If so, I am glad I got a start on in high school.

(Note: Unger's papers are at the University of Missouri.)

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